


back to a time under the canyon moon

by philthestone



Series: nursery 'verse [17]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Gen, leia talking to the nine year old in her dream: adult you is a clown and i hate him, questionable force physics, that sweet sweet skywalker family baggage: the third installment, you're cool tho
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-24
Updated: 2020-01-24
Packaged: 2021-02-25 05:07:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22390576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/philthestone/pseuds/philthestone
Summary: “You named your kid after me,” says the ghost, with a small, small smile that makes her chest ache.The tears come again, fast and hot against her cheeks, but there’s an odd smile pressing against her teeth. Something in her heart untwists.“Yes,” she says, voice wavering. “Yes, we did.”
Relationships: Leia Organa & Anakin Skywalker, Leia Organa & Luke Skywalker, Leia Organa/Han Solo, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Series: nursery 'verse [17]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/217331
Comments: 19
Kudos: 130





	back to a time under the canyon moon

**Author's Note:**

> [dj khaled voice] another one
> 
> in its original form, this was Very Old, so stylistically its not ... quite my current style but we're rolling with it babes. Unlike "golden golden golden", which was a general thematic companion piece, this one does actually connect directly and span the gaps between "there in a space full of words" and "more than a string of letters". all are leia-centric, but while the other two involve a lot more luke, this one focuses more on han's role 
> 
> anyway, title is from harry styles and i cannot BELIEVE it but we finally concluded the "how nik solo got his name" arc boys.

If it had been a nightmare, Han would have woken up with good grace.

It’s not. And her cold foot is poking him intermittently in the thigh as she tosses around.

“Sweetheart,” he mumbles, voice muffled by the pillow, “I really think that the middle of the night isn’t the best time for ‘n acrobatics act.”

“I can’t sleep.”

His face leaves the pillow just long enough so that he can crack his eyes open and peer at the small bump under the blankets.

“Is it the baby?”

“No.”

Exhale -- a breath that he doesn’t even realize he’s holding. “Then stop kicking me.”

“I am not kicking you.”

“You’re kicking me.”

“Go to sleep, Han.”

“I’m  _ tryin’ _ .”

“Fine. Fine, sorry. I promise I’ll stop kicking you.”

He mumbles something that might be translated as “’s okay” and buries his face back into the pillow, arm reaching over to drape gently over her abdomen.

It’s blissfully quiet for a good five minutes.

“It’s sort of the baby,” she says, loud and abrupt into the darkness, causing him to start and inhale a mouthful of bedding. He blinks twice to make sure he’s not still dreaming and props himself up on one elbow.

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s not the baby like  _ that _ .”

Han blinks again, struggling to understand what in stars’ name she’s talking about because he  _ really _ wants to understand what in stars’ name she’s talking about. His brain is refusing to cooperate and still-clinging to the last strands of sleep. 

“Sweetheart,” he says, “I’m trying, I really am. Does it hurt?”

“Oh, no,” says Leia, staring up at the ceiling in the darkness. “I’m fine.”

He stares at her blankly.

“Right. So –”

“What are we going to name him, Han?”

A beat.

“What are we – you wanna have this discussion  _ now _ ?”

“I had a dream last night,” she tells him, as though any other sane being on Coruscant wouldn’t be happily asleep right now, and continues to stare at the ceiling. In the halflight, he thinks that she might have frowned and so he adjusts his elbows so that the circulation to his arms doesn’t cut off, and leans over so that he can actually see her face.

“A nightmare?”

“No. Well, I suppose it could have been. But it wasn’t.”

“Leia, it’s four in the blasted morning and you’re not making  _ any _ sense.”

She sighs. “Never mind.”

“No – ah, Leia. Don’t –”

“I’m not doing anything.”

“Yeah, you’re – it’s obviously a big deal, ‘cause you’re awake kicking me at four in the morning, so just because I’m a little confused doesn’t mean I’m not tryin’ to help. What was it about?”

“I – ” She catches herself, seems to carefully formulate her next words before saying them: “In a hypothetical situation, if someone – if someone knew someone, and they were a horrible person and did all sorts of horrible things but then they sort of – weren’t. Even though they still did all those horrible things. Would it make sense that the person who  _ knew _ them wanted to forgive them even though, hypothetically, this person really didn’t  _ want _ to forgive them, or – or couldn’t. Would it make sense that they sort of wanted to, anyway?”

Han stares at her in the darkness, and she looks back, large eyes glinting in the light from the traffic whizzing past their window.

“Ah. Right. Well.”

“Yes,” she agrees. “ _ Well _ .”

“You had a dream about your dad.”

“No. Yes. I don’t – I don’t  _ know _ . This time was different.”

“Different how?”

“Maybe we should go to sleep.”

“Leia – ”

Her hands are blocks of ice as they cup his cheek. “I promise I’m not  _ doing _ it again. We can talk about it tomorrow. When we’re not half-asleep.”

“Hey, I’m wide awake now.”

“Sorry.”

“Occupational hazard. I’m used to it,” he says, and grins in the darkness. The corners of her lips twitch upwards.

“Because smugglers have to wake up at odd hours in the night?”

“Because I’m married to  _ you _ .”

“Go to sleep, Han.”

“Ah, but here we are, awake, in a  _ bed _ –”

“I’m going to kick you again.”

“That’s no fun.”

“ _ Sleep _ ,” she says, and pokes him in the chest. “I promise I won’t kick you.”

He sighs, drops back onto his pillow, hand reaching out at grab her smaller, colder one and squeeze it.

Five minutes later, he’s fast asleep, Leia’s hand still clutched in his own.

She doesn’t kick him again, but lays awake for another hour staring anxiously at the ceiling.

**

The Falcon’s halls are, for the first time in days, blissfully calm.

“So what was the problem?”

“What?”

Han drops to his knees beside her and picks up one of the discarded paintbrushes, reaches over to wipe away the smudge of yellow paint on her cheekbone.

“The other night. Why you stayed up ‘til odd hours getting off on kicking your poor sleeping husband to death.”

Leia frowns and wrinkles her nose. She makes as though to jab him with her paint brush, but then thinks better of it.

“Where are the kids?”

“With Luke. He’s managing.”

“Oh.”

Han raises an expectant eyebrow. “So?”

She hesitates a fraction too long for it to be casual. “It was nothing. I was just being silly.”

His face drops into a frown.

“You promised you wouldn’t –”

“I’m  _ not _ . I swear I’m not.”

Han un-tucks his lanky legs from under him and braces his back against the unpainted space, crossing his arms over his chest to give her a skeptical look. Leia ignores this, and goes back to blobbing paint onto the Falcon’s wall.

“ _ Leia _ .”

“Mmm?”

The paintbrush makes a wet sound as it is repeatedly pressed into the wall, each dab more aggressive than the last.

“Leia, come  _ on _ .”

“What? Here, there’s still a portion in that corner that needs to be painted blue.”

She is staring determinedly at the wall, her eyes over-bright and her mouth a thin line, and he -- perhaps wisely -- doesn’t press the matter.

**

The little boy on the counter has blue eyes. Again.

“I know who you are,” Leia tells him.

He doesn’t saying anything. This only infuriates her further, because of  _ course _ he’s not saying anything; he’s in her dream. But he’s also not. After two weeks of these dreams she’s realized they’re not so much dreams but things caught somewhere between glimpses of the past and visions.

She’s not sure she likes that, much.

“This is not changing anything,” she continues, crossing her arms over her chest, which, she realizes, is only covered by her flimsy nightgown.

_ Typical. _

His eyes leave her face at what Leia thinks must be a sound in the back of the house. It is a house that they’re in -- she’s spent so much time here the past two weeks that it’d be almost ridiculous for her not to know by now -- but it’s a very simple one. There are one or two rugs on the floor -- here, and then there -- which is otherwise made of dirt. The walls are clay, sun-bleached. The counter is cut from a similar cloth where it is not rusting metal. 

Leia watches as the boy with the sandy hair and blue eyes hops off the counter with the grace and agility that only a child can possess, and skips around the clay kitchen counter and towards the room. He pauses, for a fraction of a second, to let a woman coming out of the other room drop a kiss on his head.

She has not seen any holos of her grandmother, but something -- perhaps the same thing that found her  _ knowing _ the child, and his older, grown counterpart in that medical tent on Endor -- lodges itself in Leia’s throat. She thinks of a conversation she had with Luke, some time ago.

_ Shmi _ , he’d said, like her was gifting her the word. His Aunt Beru would talk about her, from time to time. Never any specifics -- just that she had been a mother, who had had a bright-eyed boy just like Luke.

“This is a dream,” Leia tells her dream self, speaking out loud, as though that will make the words more concrete, more true. “I’ve never seen her in real life. She’s dead.”  _ They’re _ dead. “This isn’t a memory. Or, or -- a prophecy.”

Perhaps that’s not really the point. Shmi’s eyes (tired, tender, brown as her own) watch after her boy as he leaves the room. There’s a light in them, that might be pride and might be sadness and is definitely love; Leia feels her own hand move involuntarily to cover her midriff. She bites her lip.

“I don’t care,” she tells the dream, but that’s not entirely true, either.

**

Han finds her standing by the babies’ crib, rocking Jaina gently and singing something unintelligible, her mouth pressed gently to the little girl’s light head.

He swipes his hand across his eyes as though trying to banish any lingering sleepiness. She looks up at him. She should tell him, she thinks. Explain why she’s reverted to her old nocturnal self and why in odd moments she’ll get distracted, start staring at a spot on the kitchen counter or in a corner of the Falcon, expression pinched and lips teeth-torn.

“You alright?” he whispers, voice raspy with sleep; she nods.

“I felt her fussing. But we’re fine.”

He turns to head back to the bed but hesitates, feet soundless on the carpeted floor.

“Are you sure you’re alright?”

She swallows.

_ But Mom, you always say that the galaxy’d be so much better if only people  _ helped _ other people! _

Her dreams are echoing in her head again, like they used to. But now that they’re not  _ strictly _ nightmares she doesn’t know what to do with the echoes. There used to be no talking – no snippets of conversation, no snatches of words uttered child-like and innocent. 

Jaina shifts in her arms, sensing her mother’s distress. Leia presses her mouth to the soft hair again in a kiss.

“Yes. I’ll come back in a moment.”

“Alright,” says Han. She looks back down at the baby girl in her arms. They’re not yet two -- and she can feel herself getting heavier by the day, can feel the third little flutter in her senses grow stronger, too. Every time it so much as twitches, her whole body goes warm and happy.

_ He’s just a boy _ , says a disembodied voice in her head. She squeezes her eyes shut, and hugs Jaina a little tighter.  _ He came back, Leia. _ Luke this time -- a sudden, bright and scorching memory.  _ He came back in the end. For me. For  _ us _. _

“Shhh,” she says softly to Jaina’s faint noise, watching the tiny hands curl inwards and snag at a loose lock of her hair. “Shhh, baby girl. Mama’s here.”

**

And she can’t tell Luke, because –

Well.

She just can’t.

**

They aren’t supposed to fight about it. She’s not sure she even knows how the first words get out of her mouth.

“Han?”

“Mmm,” from around the toothbrush in his mouth. She’s paused midway through brushing her hair.

“What do think of the name ‘Anakin’?”

His arm freezes mid-brush, but only momentarily. Han pulls the toothbrush out and wipes the paste away with the back of his hand. He leans against the ‘fresher sink, elbow against cool ceramic, and watches her carefully, like he’s trying to figure out what’s going on in her head. The wet toothbrush hovers in the air in his other hand.

Finally, he says,

“It’s a nice name, Leia.”

Leia can feel her own face twitch at this. It’s a harsh, seizing sensation. She’s almost certain Han notices. 

“That’s -- good to know,” she says. She goes back to brushing her hair.

“Do I get to know the reason for this question?” 

Leia’s eyebrows crease of their own volition, so she puts her brush down on the ‘fresher counter and tries to focus on schooling her expression into something less complicated. “Just wanted to know what you thought.”

Han lets out a slow breath and taps his fingers on the counter.

“Well, I told you.”

“You did,” agrees Leia, more of a skeptical edge underneath her voice than she intends. For a second time, Han’s arm stills in its movements, but this time it’s more shrewd than cautious.

“But?”

“But, what.”

“Clearly you got an opinion on my opinion.”

“No, I don’t. I just wanted to know --”

“Leia, if you want an answer with bells and whistles, you gotta give me more than that.”

Her frown deepens, lips pressing together.

“It was just a question.”

“And I just gave an answer. Can I finish brushing my teeth?”

“In a hypothetical scenario –”

“Look,” he says. The ‘fresher lights are bright enough that she can see the way his mouth twists, just barely, downwards. “If this is about what I think it is, I –”

“If this is what you  _ think _ it is?”

He takes in her incredulous expression. She watches as his shoulders sag, slightly.

“You know I’m not gonna play dumb with you.”

She looks back at the counter and picks at the bristles on her brush, doesn’t hold his gaze.

“I didn’t ask you to.”

“Didn’t you?” His voice is tired, heavy. “You just thought – is this what you were upset about the other night? You wanna name our kid after – him?”

“That is not what I said,” she snaps, and picks the brush up impulsively, starts running it through her already-brushed hair again. “You’re the one who brought that up.”

Han raises an eybrow at her sharp tone and crosses his arms over his chest.

“It sure sounded like you said it to me.”

“Well, I didn’t!”

“So what’s this about?”

“Nothing.”

“It’s not nothing.”

“You just want to make it into something. I asked a simple question, that’s all.”

“Well, alright, I just thought that maybe you’d –”

“Don’t!” she says, turning back around. “I’m – I’m just trying to figure this out and I appreciate the fact that you care, Han, but it’s really not helping that you –”

“I  _ care _ ? I dunno where the  _ hell _ you’ve been the past ten years, your Worship, but it might surprise you to know that I  _ do _ actually care about my family!”

The volume has suddenly gone from negatives to  _ too _ loud; Leia can’t stop the sarcastic bite from creeping into her voice, twisting her mouth.

“And that’s so reassuring, Han, I know –”

“Damn it, Leia,” she looks up, sharply -- he looks upset, more upset than she’s seen him since before they got married and she really, really, can’t remember the last time they did this. “I have every right to help you through this and if you think that just because you’ve still got unresolved –  _ issues _ –”

“That,” she says, razor-sharp ice leaking into her tone, “is  _ not _ the problem here.”

“Then what is?”

“I don’t know!”

“You  _ don’t know _ .” Han makes a disbelieving noise, tosses the still-wet toothbrush into the sink and runs a hand through his hair. Leia lets out a short breath.

“Han –”

“Look,” he cuts her off; she makes an angry noise. “I don’t know why you’ve suddenly forgotten, but shuttin’ people out and pretending there isn’t a problem ‘aint gonna help shit. If you wanna name our kid after him -- or, hell, if you just heard the krethin’ name in a holovid and thought  _ gee, that’s neat _ \-- you bring it up like a normal human being and we’ll  _ talk about it _ –”

“That’s  _ not what I said! _ ”

“You might as well have, for all you –”

“Stop! Stop it! This isn’t about you – your need to –”

“My  _ what _ , Leia?  _ How does this not concern me _ ?”

They’re standing three feet apart under the bright lights of the ‘fresher. Leia is gripping the hairbrush so tightly that the tips of her fingers have turned blue, and hell, when did that happen, she doesn’t remember picking it up again -- and her shoulders are trembling, and Han’s eyes, which are usually glinting with hazel light even in the worst possible situations, are dark, complicated, something more tangled than anger. His mouth is pressed in a thin line, like he’s trying hard not to say something he’ll regret.

From the other room, Jacen starts crying.

She knows it’s Jacen, because she can feel the flavour of his tiny swell of panic in her subconscious, the little flutter of emotion that always links her to her babies.

Abruptly, she feels her chest deflate. Han puts a hand on the edge of the sink, tiredly, as though all of the fight got sucked out of him. She almost doesn’t catch his muttered “ _ gfersh _ ,” and can’t parse why it bothers her so much.

“I’ll –”

“’S alright,” he says quietly. “I’ll get him. You should – just, leave it. I’ll go.”

She watches him go, then sinks down onto the ‘fresher floor and presses the heels of her palms to her eyes. When twenty minutes later the apartment is quiet again and the little flutter in her mind has quieted, the soft creak of the bed carries through the thin wall and into the ‘fresher, and she picks herself up and pads across the room. She doesn’t say anything when he pretends to have fallen asleep already.

**

Another dream. They’re all more or less the same: she talks to herself, because the boy sees her but doesn’t deign to respond, and her feelings are confused and more complicated than  _ she _ can entangle, and then she wakes up, angry and irritable. The silent, unflappable acknowledgement is the constant. Something else is always occupying his attention -- a toy, his mother, some odd chore or another lying around the house. Maybe that, more than anything is what stings.

He saw her in real life, too, and couldn’t be bothered with her once he saw something else.

“I almost wish the older you were here, so I could yell,” Leia tells the kid. He’s wiring circuits together this time, which she privately thinks look terribly complex to be handled by a nine-year-old. She thinks of her own children, and their clever fingers. Her shoulders stiffen. “I know none of it is really  _ your _ fault.” 

Unsurprisingly, he doesn’t reply. Leia lets out a huff of frustration and leans back against the table. There’s something about all this intangible time she’s spent in their small, dusty hut that has made it feel more like a home than a dreamspace. The awareness of that creeps up on her like a sandstorm might.

She glares at the top of his golden head, annoyed that that is the analogy her subconscious supplies; it’s not like  _ she’s _ ever seen a sandstorm.

From the other room, Shmi’s voice sounds: “Anakin!”

As a name, Leia’s always thought it has two meanings -- one that she  _ feels _ , deep in her bones, and one that she wants to dig out from under her skin with the blunt of her nails.

She watches as the boy’s face lights up, as he yells “coming, mom!” and scurries off into the next room. Instinct born of motherhood guiding her eyes, Leia has caught the slight dishevel in the hair above his ear, and the freckles over his nose, and the small tear in the corner of his tunic. The details unsettle her, in almost the same way she was unsettled by the scar above the eyebrow of the young ghost that stood guardian over her sleeping babies hours after she gave birth, the first time.

But it’s the sudden, vivid picture of Jacen or Jaina calling out that same, “coming, mom!” that leaves her truly wrong-footed.

**

She walks into the cockpit to find Han playing with something in his hands. He’s leaning back in the captain’s chair with his legs pressed against the console, back turned to her.

“Have you – been here all day?”

She doesn’t miss the way his shoulders start, how his fingers fumble reflexively with whatever it is they’re playing with. He twists around to look at her.

“Nah. Had to go in this morning and help with Kracken’s new project.”

“Had to, or wanted to?”

He shrugs.

“The cloaking devices Thrawn and his fleet used above Coruscant when – anyway. They’re trying to crack the mechanisms behind it, and how it could apply to starfighters and Kracken commed –”

“And of course, you would be the best man for the job?”

He offers a half-hearted smile. “I’m always the best man for the job.”

She tries smiling too, and walks over to perch on the edge of the command console. His hand ducks under his jacket momentarily; she feels her eyebrows twitch upwards against her better judgment.

“What’s that?”

“What’s what?”

“Han.”

“Leia.”

“ _ Oh – _ ” She sucks in a breath, presses a finger to her temple. “I’m  _ sorry _ , alright?”

“Yeah,” he says -- mumbles, really -- eyes leaving her face to frown at the navscreen. “I know. I’m – me too.”

She says, “Okay,”, because she’s not sure what else could come out of her mouth, and clasps her hands in her lap.

He looks up at her again, almost hesitant.

_ Everyone’s gotta have at least one psycho in-law _ , he’d once told her, half-drunk on adrenaline and victory and love. She’s not sure why she’s thinking about that, right now -- Endor carries an irritating number of memories that keep cropping up lately -- but –

Leia takes a deep breath.

“I –”

“C’mere,” he says suddenly, reaching out and snagging her wrist. His familiar, rough fingers are warm against her skin. “I wanna show you somethin’.”

She hesitates, but he gives her wrist another little tug and so she slips down from the console and hovers awkwardly at the armrest of the chair, feeling too bulky to slip down beside him but not wanting to deliberately stand apart, away from him.

Han seems not to notice this, and slips something out from under his jacket.

“I found it,” he says, in that way of his that makes her think she’s not being told the entire truth. She hasn’t heard him sound like that in a  _ long _ time. “Earlier – yesterday. I dunno.”

It’s a holo, older and scuffed on three sides, tri-dimensional but looking as though it was made in the early days of tri-D holos -- before the Old Republic fell, taken with a device that had perhaps seen better days. The fading blue light flickers, slightly; Leia suppresses a gasp.

He’s shorter than she’d always imagined, hair sticking up stubbornly at the top of his head, with clothes that are obviously long past the realm of “too small” and a gap in his big crooked smile where one of the front teeth had been lost;  _ impossibly _ young, but it’s still him.

“That’s –”

“Yeah, I can’t believe I was ever that scrawny, either.”

“Oh my stars,” she manages. “How old –”

“Maybe ten? Could’ve been nine. Can’t remember, but it was taken by some guy on the street who thought I looked ‘interesting’. Still can’t tell you what the hell that meant.”

“And he gave it to you?”

Han makes a funny noise that could be a laugh. “No. I nabbed it off him when he turned the other way.”

Leia manages to pry her eyes away from the holo to look at him. He shrugs.

“Wasn’t too thrilled with the idea of some guy havin’ a holo of me. And I was an ass of a kid, generally.”

Leia feels the disbelieving laugh bubble up in her throat.

“I’d never have guessed.”

He doesn’t say anything, but she pretends she doesn’t notice, too taken by the smiling boy in the hologram to feel the need to poke or pry. Han isn’t usually one to give away things from his childhood – or, even, more than two or three years before they met – and while she can (not without a thrill of pride) truthfully claim that she is the only one privy to a major chunk of it, even she doesn’t know everything.

Which is why she is so surprised when he interrupts her silent perusal of the flickering little boy with a quiet, “You know I grew up during the Clone Wars, right?”

She turns to look at him again, properly this time. His eyes are dark and green, and his eyebrows creased in the middle. She feels herself bite down on her bottom lip.

_ Ten years apart _ , she remembers, and wonders at the fact that they forget about it so often.

“Yes. You’ve mentioned it.”

“Mmm.” He tilts his head back against the headrest of the captain’s chair and offers a sort of half-smile. “You know, when we were – the holonet was all, the big civil war, and it was like. The Jedi were  _ it _ . They were the heroes of the galaxy, weren’t they? They were gonna save the day, them and the – what was it, the five hundred and first? Somethin’ like that. Anyway –” He exhales, Leia watching in silence. “Every kid on the street – it was a game they played.” His mouth twitches.

“A game?”

“ _ Who’re you gonna be _ ,” he recites, and now he’s not looking at her anymore but staring at the navscreen again. “ _ Skywalker or Kenobi? _ ”

Leia feels her breath escape her mouth silently. She knows that her eyes have grown wide.

Intellectually, she knows that she  _ knew _ this, but –

Han looks back at her, mouth pressed into a crooked line.

“It was some dumb kids’ game -- could play it in the street with just about anything. Or nothin’, I guess. We all loved it. And then it just – stopped. One day. No more Jedi, no more saving the galaxy. And everything just got shot out of airlock, you know?”

“Han,” she says quietly, her voice hoarse. She reaches out to touch his shoulder, her movements jerky like she doesn’t know what will happen under her fingertips.

He looks back down at the holo and laughs, quiet and harsh. “I was always him. When we played. I was –  _ kest _ .” He presses the heel of his palm into one eye.

“Han –”

“I’m sorry,” he says. “That I yelled, the other night.”

She swallows down the frog in her throat. “It’s not your fault.”

“I know,” he says flatly. “It  _ isn’t _ . You need to – to let me in. About things like this, but I shouldn’t have – jumped down your throat. Like that.”

The knee-jerk raised hackles that accompany his “it isn’t” do nothing to chase away the feeling that she has a bantha sitting on her chest.

“I don’t know what to do,” she says quietly. She’s not sure how to explain them -- the dreams. Her family. The  _ desert _ . She thinks of Han’s careful voice:  _ It’s a nice name, Leia _ . The silence is stretching out too long. “And I don’t know – how to explain it because –”

“Leia,” he starts, almost weary, but she shakes her head fiercely.

“It’s not that I don’t – that I can’t – it’s not that I want to be able to forgive him, exactly. But I – I need to figure this out on my own.” Her voice has dropped to a whisper. “Can you understand that?”

His head is tilted back again, and he’s determinedly staring at the ceiling.

“Han, please say something.”

“I need to go refit the external dampner on the aft side of the hydro tank?”

“Other than that.”

“I talked to Luke.”

“About -- this?”

He waves it aside. “You need to talk to me, more. About things.”

“I know.”

“I mean, so do I. I’m shit at talking about things.”

“I noticed.”

“But you’re even worse.”

She sighs, her eyebrows drawn in so tightly that her forehead’s beginning to ache. “I’m trying. It’s just –”

“Yeah. I know.”

“I just --”

“For what it’s worth,” he says quietly, “you know I’ve got your back whatever you decide.” A long, quiet pause. “Right?”

Leia’s chest bantha presses against her esophagus.

“Han,” she says, “you know that I –”

The beep from the comm. at her belt startles both of them, and Leia’s hand flinches and hits the chair.

“Kriff,” she hisses under her breath. “Damn. Damn, damn.”

“What?”

“There’s a – they need me to – there’s a mission debrief for the negotiations on Billibringi and -- the Sullustians are –” She looks up from the comm. at him, expression apologetic. “I have to go.”

His expression is frustratingly inscrutable. “Give Fey’lya a kiss from me.”

“ _ Han _ .”

At least he’s grinning now, she thinks, as she turns to run out of the cockpit – and then stops, turns back around. He’s half-risen out of the cockpit when she presses the kiss to his temple and sneaks the holo out of his hands.

“You should have known that if you showed me this I’d claim it as my own,” she tells his frown, and turns around to go again, flits out of the hatchway. She thinks, as she hurries down the ramp, grumbling internally about the increasing lack of maneuverability that accompanies having a tiny life form grow inside of her, that the ache in her forehead is still there.

**

She tells Luke.

Well, that was inevitable, wasn’t it.

**

Leia can’t say at exactly what point her mind registers that she is no longer standing in the bare, dusty clay kitchen she has slowly become accustomed to over the past week, but in a place that is by now more familiar to her than anywhere else in the galaxy.

She can say, however, that she notices that the little boy’s hair is darker than usual maybe thirty seconds into the dream.

He’s playing with a small contraption that looks as though it’s been wired together by hand and painted by an eight year old – something that could be called a toy starship but is more of a confusing combination of poorly-welded scraps of durasteel. His mouth makes silent  _ pew pew _ sounds as he turns it around in his hands, concentrating intently on his task. Leia notices the Rogue Squadron colours decorating the side of the toy right around the same time she notices the darker hair.

She takes a step back, levels a hand out to steady herself. Naturally, in her own dreamspace, the Rogue insignia on his toy is not unnatural. It’s just -- the juxtaposition of it. Did he play Rebels and Rogues as a child? Or -- something similar?

_ Who are you gonna be _ , Han had said. Leia puts her arms around herself. She’s in her flimsy nightgown again -- it’s all she had, tonight -- and something about this dream is making her shiver. Everything seems to exist in cycles. 

At her tremor, the little boy looks up; he looks surprised at having his game interrupted. She blinks at him. His blue eyes blink back, surprise lingering only a moment before he grins, suddenly, brilliantly, apple-tinted cheeks dimpling as his small mouth stretches crookedly. This is the first time he’s looked at her with something more than an unflappable knowingness, and Leia hesitates for a moment before smiling back. Then she watches, as he gets distracted once more by the toy in his hand. She decides that she’s had enough.

“I don’t know why I keep dreaming about you,” she tells the boy, wondering why something seems –  _ different _ – “but it’s not making any difference. So you can just stop – hounding me, if you don’t mind.”

He ignores her, and she feels herself get irritated, even though never once in all of her dreams the past month has anyone spoken back to her. She tires to stand taller and clenches her hands; her nails dig into her palms.

“Sometimes I think it’s so easy for Luke,” Leia continues. “It’s -- of course it must not be, but it  _ feels _ like he just -- just  _ can _ . I  _ can’t _ . I can’t forgive you.” Then, more stubbornly: “I  _ won’t _ . Having a – being a child once upon a time isn’t – you’re not – it doesn’t mean that you still weren’t  _ him _ .”

More silence. She’s now watching him make faces at the starship in his hand, intent on his game. 

With a sharpness like a vibroblade, the look of concentration on his face is suddenly, devastatingly familiar. 

He lifts the toy above his head, and Leia studies him, traces the soft curves of his small nose and crooked lips and gapped teeth. Her eyes settle on the stubborn tuft of hair that’s sticking up at the top of his head. The air whooshes out of her lungs.

It’s not –

It’s –

_ Oh _ . Deep breath, swooshing in and out of her lungs. She stares at him. Her fingers have suddenly gone numb, and she thinks vaguely, detachedly, that she’s shivering because this nightgown has always been miserable at keeping away the chill of deep space. The boy looks back at her again, grinning more widely this time, and crawls off of the Falcon’s holochess table with well-practiced ease, disappearing into the hallway leading to the cockpit.

She wakes up.

She feels herself jolt forward, blinking in the darkness of the foreign, New Republic cruiser cabin. Her fingers are gripping the sheets of her unfamiliar bed, breath caught in her throat in a gasp. Her first instinct, of course, is to turn over and reach out to shake him awake, but –

It doesn’t even register to think what the chrono might read in Coruscant, that it is even later there than it is for her; when the comm. chirps in the affirmative and Han’s face flickers into view she takes in the mussed quality of his hair, sticking up at odd angles on the side of his head, feeling a wave of guilt. The underside of his eyes are puffy, as though he’s just woken up, and he’s not wearing a shirt, but before she can blurt out an “I’m sorry,” he scrambles upright into a sitting position and leans into the holoscreen, awake and alert.

“Leia! I was just about to call you!”

She blinks, momentum brought to an abrupt halt.

“ _ You _ were going to call  _ me _ ?”

“Yeah, it was – kriff, sorry, isn’t it – what time is it there?”

“Um,” she says. “I don’t know.”

“Oh,” he says, “right. Are you – is everything okay? There?”

She traces the familiar curve of his mouth and the lock of stubborn hair on his forehead with her eyes and feels a lump grow in her throat. The worst part is that she can’t even blame it on the pregnancy (though,  _ hell _ , she thinks, they spent  _ most _ of their time this way when she was pregnant with the twins) – but she’s always like this, when they’re on other sides of the galaxy. This time it feels even more frustrating, more anxiety-inducing; she’d spent the entire week before her departure in a limbo between wanting to talk to him and not wanting to talk to him and even though they’d made up every interaction was still tense, strange. She hasn’t even been gone a full  _ day _ .

It doesn’t help things that negations with the Billibringi are nigh about to go to the lowest depths of the very last Corellian hell, but she shoves all of this to the back of her mind, and swallows down the lump.

“I’m fine,” she says. “All fine.”

“That’s – that’s good,” he says, the sleepy hoarseness in his voice only barely audible. She presses her lips together and takes a deep breath. He looks distracted -- preoccupied -- his eyes flicking to look at something outside the holocam.

“I had a dream,” they both say at the same time. Leia feels her hands tighten around the commlink and something in her chest jumps.

“What?” she says, while Han makes a funny coughing noise.

“ _ You _ had a dream?”

“Yes,” she says, “I’ve been having them for wee –” She frowns. “Wait.  _ You _ had a dream?”

He runs a hand through his hair, making it stick up even further on-end and leans closer into the viewscreen of the comm.

“Yeah, it was –” Eyes closed, just briefly – “Leia, I dunno what it was or – or if it meant anything, but there was – ah, kriff, I’m doin’ this all wrong.” He makes a face, and rubs a hand over the scar on his chin. “I just – had to tell you.”

“That’s why you were going to call,” she guesses, cupping the commlink in her hands and crawling back to rest against the bunkpost, tugging the blanket over her shoulders.

“Yeah, it was – hells, Leia, it was – there was something about it that I –”

“Calm down,” she instructs, shoving away the desire to jump in and tell him what she’d seen. “Start from the beginning. Was it a nightmare?”

“ _ No _ ,” he says, almost laughing. “Hardly. It was just –  _ strange. _ ”

“Strange?”

“Yeah.” His hands are jumpier than usual -- nervous, more than restless energy. They move from his chin to the back of his neck. “I’ve never had a dream like it before. There was – I was in this room, with – I think it was in the desert? Or – kinda looked like Kenobi’s hut, actually, and there was a little boy on the counter and he couldn’t have been more than, I dunno, six or seven, and I just sat and watched him wi –” He stops. “Leia?”

She realizes that her entire throat has gone dry, that her expression is probably bordering-on-disturbed, and that Han, sitting there with sleep-mussed hair and jumpy hands and confusion clouding his bright eyes, really,  _ really _ deserves an explanation.

“A little boy,” she manages. Han frowns.

“Yeah. Look, I don’t – this is gonna sound  _ crazy _ , but I think it was –”

“Were his eyes blue?” she blurts. He stares at her.

“Yeah,” says Han, after a moment of silence. “Yeah, they were.”

“ _ Vos _ ,” she swears softly. She can hear the suddenly crackling over the commlink as Han shifts in his seat, moving so that he’s resting on his elbows.

“So does this mean he’s who I think he was?”

She can hear the controlled strain in his voice.

“I – no? I don’t know.” She presses her fingers against her forehead. “Han, I’ve been having that dream recurrently for the past month.” He stares at her, and she grimaces, teeth automatically biting down on her lower lip. “So. It’s not just – out of the blue.”

“You mean it wasn’t some weird one-time thing that came from bad food?” He makes a face. “No offense,” he says, “but I thought I wasn’t part of this whole Force thing.”

“You’re – I don’t know,” she says, chewing on her lip. “Luke says you’re not Force sensitive, and you haven’t had dreams like this before?”

To her surprise, Han is silent for a moment, looking down at the darkened upholstery of the couch he’s laying on.

“You haven’t,” says Leia. “Right?”

He shrugs, looking up at her. “Nah. Only one comes to mind was definitely bad food.”

“Han.”

“It’s not a big deal,” he says, waving his hand. “Just –”

“ _ Han _ –”

“Ah-ah-ah,” interrupts her husband. “No fair. You said you had a dream, too. And you still haven’t told me why the dream  _ I _ had made you looked like Palpatine’d offered you a free hug.” He hesitates. “Uh. Aside from the obvious reasons, of course.”

“It’s like I said,” she tells him, probing her tongue at the now-raw skin of her lip. “I’ve been having dreams like that one for the past few weeks. They’re all the same.”

Han scratches at the back of her neck and blinks at her.

“I sit in the room. He’s  _ there _ . He’ll be playing with his toy, or -- or talking to his -- mother. I heard his friends, once or twice -- and he never talks to me, so it’s not exactly therapeutic because what kind of a mother would I be if I just started yelling at a kid --” For the thousandth time, Leia is reminded of just how gentle her husband’s expressions can be. It doesn’t undo her, but it does -- something. She is grateful that he restrains himself from pointing out that she never once mentioned them, either, even though she knows he probably wants to very much.

“So,” he says. “We had the same dream.”

“No.” Leia shakes her head, taking a deep breath. “Tonight it was different.”

She can see his eyebrows quirk up, even in the half-light -- can see the way his lips press together and his shoulders tense. She thinks that Han has known them long enough to know when to prepare himself for Things Like This – things most other sane beings in the galaxy would dismiss, and stars’ sake, he used to dismiss too, but which happen to them on a bi-weekly basis. Sometimes Leia finds herself wondering who in their right mind would willingly take part in such a family.

“It was – Han. You know, how in that – in those other dreams. The one you had too. You could –”

“Tell who the kid was?” His mouth has twisted slightly, a graceful attempt at avoiding a grimace. She can still sense his discomfort. “And it was weird as hell? Yep.”

“Well,” she says. “This was even weirder.”

“Wouldn’t be us if it wasn’t. So?”

“The boy was –” She opens her mouth, closes it again. “He had blue eyes.”

“Like – the other kid?”

“Yes.”

“So …?” He raises an expectant eyebrow. She can swear he’s almost amused at her hesitation to divulge the specifics of the boy’s identity. It should infuriate her -- the amusement -- but all it does is make her obscenely happy, despite everything, that he’s no longer abrupt and closed off and  _ gods _ but she’s missed him. “It can’t’ve been weirder than having a dream – vision – thing –” He makes a face – “of your dearly departed father. Right?”

“He had your hair,” she blurts out. “And – and the nose. That was the same. Too.”

Han stares at her.

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“ _ Oh _ .”

“Yes. Exactly.”

“That – you –”

“It’s not unheard of,” she finds herself saying. “Right? I mean, I could always ask Luke but I’m fairly sure even non-sensitives have dreams about their babies and I – it could’ve just been an – an imagination thing, or my subconscious –”

“Leia,” he’s saying. “Leia, honey –”

“And maybe it was just – I mean the timing, with your dream, that could be a coincidence completely, things like this  _ happen _ –”

“Leia!”

Her sentence dies in her throat. “… Yes?”

“Okay,” he says, looking at her sternly, parroting her own instructions back at her. “First: calm down.”

She swallows. “I’m calm.”

Han takes a deep breath, through his nose. “Right. I’m –  _ not _ the person you should be asking for advice. On this. But – what do  _ you  _ think?”

“What do you mean?”

“How did you. Did you feel it? Like you could with the other dream?”

She bites down on her lip.

“Yes.”

“Yes?”

“I knew it was – I know it was him, Han.”

“Right,” he says, letting out a deep breath. “Well. That’s it, then.”

She presses her fingers to the bridge of her nose and leans her head back against the pillows. “ _ Vos _ ,” she says again, the Alderaani slipping off her tongue with an ease that should not be so well-practiced. Han laughs weakly.

“Did you know those swear words  _ before _ you met us, or did we just bring out the best of you?”

“Very funny,” she says, still leaned back against the bunk post. “You do realize that you having that dream, that I’ve been having for the past  _ month _ , on the same night I have a dream about our son is –”

“Yeah,” he says, his grin fading. “I see it.”

“What does it  _ mean _ ?” she says, feels the lump crawl back into her throat. “It’s been – after me, all month, and I have no idea what I’m supposed to – what does it want me to  _ do _ ?”

Han is silent for a moment.

“When you say  _ it _ . Are you – are you talking about the Force?”

She frowns; she hadn’t realized that that was what she meant. “I suppose so.”

He sighs, looks down at the couch. “I dunno what to say, Leia.”

“But you’re good at this sort of thing,” she says. Han snorts, the type that is more derisive than humorous, and swipes a hand over his eyes, which are growing more tired by the minute. “It’s true,” Leia insists. And it  _ is _ ; he knows how to deal with  _ them _ better than they know how to deal with themselves. He’s been doing it since they were chronically depressed teenagers trying to take on the galaxy with nothing but the last dregs of idealism and the skin on their teeth. Of course, back then, all of it was wrapped under layers of hurt and confusion and terribly unhealthy coping mechanisms. 

And then she thinks -- cycles. Here he is, doing it again -- knowing her. But in a new way, a different way. Healthier, almost.

“Yeah, right,” Han’s saying. “I’ve been ‘round you two long enough to know there ain’t always a straightforward answer to –  _ things _ – and that sometimes there’ll be things that I just can’t understand.” He pauses. It looks like his eyes are tracing the pattern on the couch upholstery. Leia remembers, abruptly and with a longing that is difficult to quell, that she  _ hates _ that stupid couch. They should get a new one. When -- she comes home. 

“But what I  _ do _ know,” Han continues, “is that -- well, you guys’ve always had a way with taking bad things and makin’ ‘em better.”

She thinks again:  _ cycles _ . Children with mothers and no mothers and good things that crumble and are rebuilt and family that loves and loses and loves again, and couches that get old and are replaced by new ones.

“Oh,” she says. A couch with good back support -- that’s what they’ll get.

“Yeah,” says Han.

“How – how are the kids?”

If he notices the change of topic, he doesn’t say. Instead, his expression morphs into a comically exaggerated version of the resignation he usually sports when attending particularly unpleasant state functions.

“Holy terrors,” he says, sounding like he’s trying very hard not to laugh. She almost laughs with him.

“What have they been doing?”

“It’s what they  _ haven’t _ been doing that’s the problem, honey.”

“What?” she sits up, feeling very uncoordinated and heavy, and struggles to contain the instinctual surge of excitement at hearing about the twins. “Are they –”

“Twenty four hours,” says Han, “Twenty fours hours and they haven’t slept more than thirty minutes.  _ Twenty four hours _ .”

Leia stares at him, face bathed by the blue light from the holo.

“Are you telling me,” she says finally, watching him narrow his eyes at the teasing lilt of her tone, “that  _ Han Solo _ can’t deal with a couple of insomniac babies?”

“No,” he grumbles, glaring at her. “’Course I can deal with them. I  _ like _ dealing with ‘em. You know, Jacen decided the other day that he could braid my hair to look like yours?”

“Han, he’s not even two yet.”

“Didn’t stop Junior from tryin’.” His expression is long-suffering, mouth stretched flat, but his eyes are warm and bright and brimming with affection, and she has to suppress a smile. “They get this –”

“From  _ your _ side of the family,” she says promptly. “Smugglers sleep insane hours, remember.”

“I feel like I should bring up the fact that you were practically nocturnal for the first four years I knew you,” says Han. Abruptly, Leia feels herself grinning, because there is a sparkle in his eyes that wasn’t there before, visible even in the darkness of the room. “But I won’t, ‘cause I’m dead tired and should probably try to nab the precious hours of sleep I  _ can _ have.”

“Has Luke been around?” she asks quickly, and he stops in moving to sit up to roll his eyes.

“Course he has. Kid loves babysitting more than’s probably healthy, remember?”

“Oh,” she says. “Oh, good. Look, Han, I –”

“’S alright,” he says, gruffly, shuffling to get up. “We’ll figure things out. I told you -- I’ve got your back.”

“I know.” She struggles, the words catching in her throat. “I just – I’m –”

“Hey,” he says gently. “It’s fine. I know. G’night, Leia. Stay safe, you hear me?”

“Yes,” she hears herself say. “Yes, of course. Give Luke a kiss from me?”

He grins then, fleetingly, and winks, before the comm. beeps and his face is gone in a blur of blue static.

She leans back against the pillows and stares at the ceiling. For the first time in years, the darkness is suddenly, overwhelmingly claustrophobic.

Cycles. Rebirth.  _ It’s a nice name, Leia _ .

And what had Luke said --  _ Aunt Beru’d tell me that Tattoo names have weeks of thought behind ‘em. So I figure -- but this one, I honestly don’t know what it means. _ He hadn’t said he’d find out -- but a part of her knows her brother. She knows that he will.

And a part of her has already ascribed meaning to it, in a way.

She breathes, closing her eyes and focusing on her heartbeat -- and then, the other one, faint and fluttering in the back of her consciousness. Will he really grow into that little boy, she thinks, playing with his X-wing?

She’s in the middle of taking a deep, calming breath when the baby kicks.

The commlink is clicked open and his face is flickering into view before she’s caught her breath.

“Sweetheart –”

“I wasn’t finished,” she tells him in her best Princess Voice. Han stares at her for a little less than thirty seconds before breaking out into a grin.

Sudden, brilliant, the first genuine grin she’s seen in over a week –

“Oh, yeah?” Like it’s a challenge. Which, of course, it  _ is _ .

“I was  _ going _ to say,” she says, narrowing her eyes, “that I love you. And I’m sorry. For being a nerf. About this.”

“It’s a sensitive topic,” he says, shrugs, and she hates the fact that he’s  _ there _ but she can’t lean over and kiss him. “And we sort of – well.” He makes a face. “I think I acted pretty lousy too.”

“I should have told you,” she insists. “About the dreams. I don’t – I didn’t know why I –”

“Hey.” She is reminded again just how gentle Han’s voice can be, when he wants it to. “It’s fine, Leia. We said we’d figure it out, right?”

“I agree with you,” she says. “About -- it’s a nice name.”

Han blinks at her, expression growing complicated before smoothing out again. “You sure? ‘Cause there’s one I heard in one of Mara’s holoserials that I thought was real neat-sounding --”

“Har har, Han, very funny.”

“I  _ am _ a pretty funny guy --”

“Right,” she says firmly, and takes a breath. “Well, that’s all I needed to say.”

Han’s grin softens.

“You know when you’ll be home again?”

“Soon. I hope.”

“So the Billibringi –” But she cuts him off with a groan.

“Don’t,” she says. “Do  _ not _ talk to be about that. Oh, my Force, it’s just so – so –”

“I heard it was a  _ fshlek- _ show,” he says, and she can sense that he’s not sure whether he should be laughing at her obvious frustration or concerned. She supposes that blaster fire and angry sentients surrounding you is never a good thing.

“ _ Ugh _ ,” she says, and he laughs outright – in response to her being so uncharacteristically dramatic or because he’ll forever take obscene amounts of enjoyment out of any political situation that drives her up the wall, she doesn’t know.

“Listen, Leia, I wasn’t kidding when I said I had to sleep.” His tone is genuinely regretful. “Kracken’s got us up tomorrow at dawn running sims and we’ve still gotta refit the side of the cabin wall with durasteel if we ever wanna get this damn nursery  _ done _ , so –”

“Sleep,” she says immediately. “Go go go, sleep. And when I get back promise to drum some sense into our errant children, before you turn into an insomniac as crazy as myself.”

“I’m holdin’ you to that, princess.” He pauses. “Just – come back, alright?”

“Of course I’m coming back,” she says, decisive. “If I don’t come back, that nursery is  _ never _ going to get done.”

He gives a smile, small and sheepish, and she grins back.

“I love you,” he says, instead of answering the nursery jibe. Her smile grows wider; the chest bantha isn’t gone, but lifting, slowly.

“We established this,” she tells him. “A while ago.”

“’Course we did.” He turns to flick the comm. off, but pauses, and she catches a glimpse of the sudden mischief in his eyes before he adds: “and I love the nightgown too, by the way. The neckline in particular is –”

“Oh my gods,  _ go to sleep _ .” The damn thing has gotten too small for her in the last trimester, she keeps  _ saying _ . 

“The downside of having a government official as a wife,” Han says, mock despairingly. “You can look, but you can’t –”

She flicks the commlink off with finality and spends the next ten minutes laughing in the darkness, pressing her pillow to her mouth to stifle the sound. She’s fairly sure that waking up the whole ship won’t win her any points in the political arena.

She falls asleep laughing, breath catching in her throat when the baby kicks again.

_ No more dreams _ , she pleads, as her eyes slide shut.

**Author's Note:**

> usually dont leave end notes anymore but han's force-dream is an homage to an old revenge of the sith concept wherein padme, who has no force sensitivity, experienced some whilst pregnant with the twins. of course, the science of that is a little different, but i like the idea of the force permeating through families in moments of especially high emotion/bonding/crisis etc
> 
> there are also ofc theories out there that han secretly has a bit of force sensitivity in him due to his piloting skills, but in this house we love his particularly flavoured Just Some Bastard With Really Great Instincts energy


End file.
